The highly competitive global PV monitoring market, which includes inverter suppliers, independent monitoring vendors, and project developers that integrate hardware and software to manage a PV system's operations data, is forecasted to be a 23-gigawatt global market in 2012, according to GTM Research's latest Global PV Monitoring 2012 report. While European independent monitoring vendors currently lead the market, the forecasted expansion of monitored PV capacity to nearly 50 gigawatts by 2016 foretells robust opportunity for existing and new suppliers.

Though monitoring technology is a critical aspect of a solar PV plant's successful operation (one single system outage can impact the overall plant production by 1 percent per year, and potentially more if it occurs in summertime), the market has received limited attention due to its relatively low impact on the upfront cost of a PV system. The lack of comprehensive, global and independent market research has lead to a situation where many vendors call themselves market leaders without the ability to confirm such claims with confidence -- until now.

GTM Research and SoliChamba Consulting have partnered to release Global PV Monitoring: Technologies, Markets and Leading Players, 2012-2016. This 123-page report includes global and regional market shares by company and market share by segment, as well as demand projections to 2016 by market segment and region. The report also includes over 20 company profiles for: